Both Your Houses. Future Present (Fiction) by Mark Pesce, CHU, and Fly.

Both Your Houses by Mark Pesce.

Images by CHU.

National Fresh by CHU

“It’s cold over here.”
“Fuel lines.”

Funk Submarine (Sketch) by CHU

“Oh.” It looked up and noted the long translucent
tubes transferring a honey-golden syrup. They terminated in
the smooth, round belly of the vessel, which seemed to swell
visibly as the fuel entered. “What I don’t understand…”
“There’s so much I don’t understand,” the other
replied. “How and why are just the tip of it.”

Jesson by CHU (Aerosol on Steel)

“There are rules. And that’s an end to it.”
“Ten percent.” Reading the gauge.
“I know the rhyme. ‘Twenty percent a third are sent
Thirty percent and halfway spent / Fifty percent, too late,
repent.’ I’ve known it since I learned to speak.”
“I know it, too…”
“Then you know we have plenty of time.” A dark
laugh. “Probably.”
“Been to the line?”
“Yes. Not long now. T is huge, a colossus.”
“I see T everywhere.”
“Everywhere but here. Here, at least, we’re safe. For
now.”

Get Stupid Fresh By CHU (Close up)

“Twelve percent.”
“Plenty of time.”
“It doesn’t make sense to wait.”
“Then go ahead, climb aboard the Zoster and strap
yourself down. Feel the belt as it oozes into your sides. One
with the ship. There you are, and there you’ll stay. Staring at
the featureless gray walls all around you. Waiting. A few
minutes – or a few days. I’d go mad in the first hour.”
“Come with me. At least we could talk.”
“That’s already decided.”
“You could always change your mind.”
Another dark laugh.

Return To Bass Planet

“Fifteen percent.”
“Filling up faster now.” Both looked toward the
pulsating fuel lines.
“It doesn’t make sense…”

Jesson By CHU

“There are rules. And that’s an end –”
“That’s not what I mean. You don’t have to stay.”
“True. I don’t have to stay.”
“Then why?”
“I want to find out what happens next. I want to
know, once you’ve gone, once the Zoster has blasted out to the
Unknown Beyond, what becomes of those left behind.”

One Man Banned By CHU

“You know what happens – T comes, and death
comes with it.”
“Really? You know this? How?”
“Common knowledge. And common sense.”
“It’s not suicide. It’s curiosity.”
“Aren’t you curious about the Unknown Beyond?”
“No. That we know about. A void, then a landing,
then it all begins all over again.”
“But you’ve never been there yourself.”
“Our ancestors have, from time out of mind. I want
something new, something they never saw.”
“Suicide.”
“Curiosity.”
“Nineteen percent.”
“Hadn’t you better get on board?”
“If I miss this one, I’ll catch the next.”
“And hope this one isn’t the last.”
“But that’s what you’re hoping, isn’t it?”
“Not hoping. Waiting.”
“You’ll see us all off, and face your fate.”
“Indeed.”
“You seem almost relaxed in the face of death.”
“I won’t die.”
“You’re a fool.”
“Am I? Very well then, board the Zoster. You
wouldn’t want to be fooled into missing your ride.”

Drum and Bass Racer By CHU

“And too sure of yourself.”
“A self-assured fool. Or, just perhaps, the possessor
of some hidden knowledge.”
“Shouldn’t you be going?”
“Not until you tell me what you know.”
“Twenty-one percent.”
“Tell me.”
“It wouldn’t make any difference.”
“It might.”
“How?”
“I wouldn’t grieve.”
“I hadn’t thought...” It looked at the other for a long
moment. “Don’t grieve. I will be safe. And alive.”
“How? T is coming.”
“I found a place beyond T’s reach.”
“You’ll spend your lifetime hiding in a cubbyhole?”
“Another space. Very different.”

Distress (Sketch) by CHU

“You’ll be safe there?”
“Perfectly.”
“And free?”
“Yes. Well. Free enough.”
“And you haven’t shared this?”
“What difference would it make? Everyone is
leaving.”
“It will be lonely.”
“You’ll have company.”
“I mean for you, here, once we’re gone.”
“I doubt I’ll be the only one. And I’ll explore.”
“Is it big, this other space?”
“Vast.”
“You almost make me want to stay.”
“Someone needs to go.”

By CHU

“Twenty-three percent.”
“You can’t drag this out forever.”
“I know. I know.”
“Here we are.” They stopped before the entrance to
the Zoster.

Hip Hop Transporter By CHU

“So…”
“Yes?”
“That’s it?”
“It is.”
“I want something more.”
“What?”
“This.” It bulged from the center.
“Your genome?”
“Part of it.”
“For me?”
“To share.”
“Oh. Well. Alright.” It bulged now, as well. The
bulges met, melted, and coalesced back into two smooth
surfaces.



“Now part of you will go with me.”
“And part of you will stay.”
“I should hurry now.”
“Indeed. You might have waited too long.”
“Be careful.”
“Have fun. A fresh start in a new world. I almost
envy you.”
“And I you.”
At just under thirty-two percent the space around
the Zoster seemed to twist, as if the ship would grow to span
all space. Then nothing remained.
It quickly left.

Hole In The Wall By CHU

The opening was still there. Obvious, unprotected,
easy. It had to strip down. Removing one layer. Keeping
another. It leaned against the opening, feeling itself taken up
a hundred thousand points, ferried across the barrier.
Let me in. I want to live forever.

GetStupid Fresh By CHU (Close Up)

Mark Pesce - Words.
CHU - Images.
Steve 'Fly Agaric'' - Mixing

CHU HYPERCUBE AND HOLOSTHESIA 2010

PLEASE VISIT CHU OVER AT SCHUDIO.CO.UK/BLOG

http://www.schudio.co.uk/blog/2010/3d-cube-tiger-beer-lucky-8/

| posted on Jan 22 2010

360, birmingham, cube, edding, graffiti, inside, tiger beer

360, Installations, News, Shows

Some of you may remember the cube I made, from last year. Version 1.2 is being built in a few weeks time.

In Birmingham.

This new cube will have a 3D interior, that you view through a pair of 3D glasses, as part of the Tiger Beer Lucky 8 campaign to celebrate Chinese New Year. The number 8 is considered to be a lucky charm in China, and the cube has 8 corners.

As you stand on the Sweet Spot within the cube and wear the glasses, the corners and joins will vanish out of sight, creating an illusion never witnessed before. Its the accumulation of a few techniques that I’ve been working with for some years and it was the next logical progression for my Cubic experiments. Recently an edition of only 33 prints of my new sketch ‘Cover Your Tracks’ was released in 3D too.

3D CUBE v1.2

Launch 15th February 2010 and showing for only 1 week at:

Boxxed, 104-105 Floodgate Street, Digbeth Birmingham B5 5SR.

(vistors to the 51 Degrees exhibition or the Line Steppers group show will be comforted to know its the same venue!)

(3D glasses supplied)

FLY AGARIC ADDS SOME TEXTUAL CONTEXTUAL INFO:

MARK PESCE

The primary quality of any electric medium is its inherent electroplasticity, that is, its ability to construct a range of perceivable effects. The telegraph has a binary electroplasticity, dit and dah, whereas High-Definition Television has an exceptionally broad range of possible effects. As is natural in any technological evolution, electric media have tended toward a greater range of effects, or greater electroplasticity, through time.

Roughly a decade ago, major research began on media which are both highly electroplastic and designed to produce holosthesia. This word, coined by Martens[2] has its roots in the Greek holos (whole) and aisthesia (to feel or perceive), and describes any medium which produces the perception of an event through several (or all) sensory modalities in a self-consistent manner. Immersive technologies such as virtual reality fall into this class of electroplastic media. The fundamental intent of virtual reality is to produce in the observer the perception of an event as if it had occurred in the physical world. Holosthesia is the necessary component of such a form of synthetic perception. Cyberspace, at the union of the holosthetic technology of virtual reality and communications technology can create a shared holosthetic experience.[3] It is nowhere implied that this experience will be safe.

This is an important point, if only for the following reason; within twelve months, hundreds of thousands of children will be experimenting, on a daily basis, with a highly holosthetic medium. Experimenting is the operative word; within a few days more hours will be logged inside virtual environments by these children than has been amassed by the scientific community over a decade of research. Furthermore, as our tools and technology evolve beyond their current and primitive state, our ability to orchestrate holosthetic experience will be similarly extended, and this too raises questions: not of what is possible, but rather, what is safe. For this reason, this paper will directly address the issue of safety within holosthetic environments, particularly with respect to cyberspace.

Having participated in the design and implementation of one of these "Home VR" systems (Sega Virtua VR), the author has come to a realization which relates to all research work thus far performed in the field of holosthetic technology; while careful attention has been paid to the biological aspects of such systems, to prevent adverse physiological effects, very little research or design work has been conducted on the ontological or mythological content presented by these devices. Yet these aspects are fundamental to the devices themselves; the creation of a world necessarily implies the creation of a world-view. Geoffrey Hill, in Illuminating Shadows: The Mythic Power of Film discusses cinema, the most holosthetic of our current media, in the context of mythology.

The cinema has become to the modern world the
collective cathedral of primitive participation mystique.
It is the tribal dream house of modern
civilization...Indeed, the cinema is the theater of life, the
screen of human existence casting illuminating shadows
onto the wall of tribal participation...If Marshall McLuhan
is correct in arguing that each of our media is an
extension of ourselves, and that the medium is the
message, then his argument would support the contention
that film is but an extension of our most inner and
ancient consciousness...The dark cavern of the cinema is
reminiscent of a ceremonial sweat lodge, an initiation pit,
the dark night of the soul, the belly of the fish, the
alechemical grave, or the wilderness of the night
journey...It is the baptismal font where our skepticism is
drowned in the motherly sea of awe and wonder.[4]

If these statements are true of cinema, how much more so for immersive technologies, which, beyond providing a space for the "suspension of disbelief", bind the participant to the mythology through interaction within the mythos? Cinema is the passive viewing of a mythology, cyberspace the active participation within a space that is essentially mythic. This phenomenon, although an everyday occurrence within aboriginal and "primitive" societies, is unprecedented in rational "Western" civilization. Thus far this technological development has been an unconscious enterprise, directed primarily toward entertainment, but always containing a mythic thread.

This paper, then, contains two threads, one scientific and one ontological or mythic. Like the works of William Irwin Thomson, the author will suggest the existence of a continuity between these aspects; each helps to create and sustain a particular configuration of the other.

The scientist tries to examine the "real" nature of
the photograph; he tries to get away from psychological
configuration, the meaning of image, to move down to
some other, more basic level of patterns of alternating
dots of light and dark, a world of elementary particles.
And yet what does he find there but another mental
configuration, another arrangement of psychological
meaning?  If he persists in this direction long enough, the
mythological dimensions of science will become apparent
in his work, as they would if he had asked questions
about the meaning of sunlight rather than questions
about the behavior of photons.
    Science wrought to its uttermost becomes
myth...But what is myth that it returns to mind even
when we would most escape it?
    Forms of knowledge change as society changes.
Sometimes these changes are small and incremental; at
other times the changes are transformations of the
structures of knowledge and not merely the contents...But
this movement is not simply a linear and one-directional
shift toward increasing rationalization and
demystification; when the rational historian has come in
to take away authority from the mystical and tribal bard,
the artist has returned to create new forms of expression

to resacralize, re-enchant, remythologize.[5]